Here is a patch that I have used to make my stereo headphone listening experience a little better.

A problem with listening to many stereo recordings with headphones (with the exception of binaural recordings) is that when sounds are panned hard left or right in the stereo mix, there is a very unnatural circumstance where the sound is only heard in one ear and not the other. Normally, when listening to sound sources around us, both ears will hear the sound. Depending on the location of the sound source, one ear will get a more direct exposure, while the other a little less. This results in the ear further away from the sound source having a slightly delayed time arrival of the sound. Also, your head will affect the frequency spectrum response (e.g. for a sound source to the far right of your head, your left ear will still receive some of the sound, but it will be slightly time delayed, with a little less amplitude, along with a roll-off shaping of the high frequency spectrum). These differences in time and frequency spectrum between each ear are part of what our auditory system uses to locate sound sources in space around us.

This patch is an attempt to address this headphone listening problem by adding a time delay and frequency shaped cross-fade between the left and right stereo mix.

During recent testing of this Headphones processor patch, I used a noisemaker patch placed in the VA as a demo stereo sound source. It has extreme left and right stereo panning of sounds that I had originally patched while monitoring with stereo loudspeakers.

Wow! What a dramatic difference in sound! With headphones, Variation 7 (effect bypass) the normal stereo mix makes this demo patch sound disjointed, disconnected… But, with Variation 6, (Headphones processor engaged), the demo sound is much more integrated, resembling the sound while listening to the original stereo loudspeaker mix.

But, I don’t consider this patch to be finished (more work on the EQ of the cross-faded high frequencies (controlled by the Hi Mix knob) could be an improvement). My original goal was to patch a headphone processor that would sound more like listening to stereo music on loudspeakers, or a stereo loudspeaker mix to binaural headphones processor. This patch falls short of that goal, although I think that it still sounds much better than no processing at all. Anyway, I left this patch in an unfinished experimental phase as my need for headphone listening was drastically reduced due to my household relocation (no longer dwelling in an apartment!). So, please post what you think about the sound of this patch. Since it is still experimental, I also invite everyone’s tweaks!

I had originally patched this for use with my Sony MDR-7506 headphones, and then more recently for my Beyerdynamic DT 770 phones. This patch also includes my overall preference for headphone EQ. Of course, you should adjust this patch for your own headphones cross-talk and EQ preferences.

The morph knob settings of Variations 1 -5 are only suggested starting points for your own tweaking…

Controls Mapped to the Front Panel (A1):

Morph 1: Effect, controls a mix of the dry and wet effected sound (not including the LoBoost).

Morph 2: LoBoost, controls the level of bass frequency boost EQ.

Morph 3: Hi Mix, controls the high frequency roll-off of the crosstalk between the stereo channels.

Morph 4: X Delay, controls the cross-faded delay time between the stereo channels. Each channel uses a Clocked Delay module that is clocked at 48KHz. Each X Decay control increment increases the sample delay time about 20.833 microseconds. The maximum practical X Delay setting value is about 15.6 on the front panel display, which equals about 438 microseconds.

Sounds great! the demo patch is self explanatory.
I used it a bit this morning at home, I'll try better tonight. This will come handy to listen some of my old Beatles recordings _________________Cheers,
Albert

Sounds great! the demo patch is self explanatory.
I used it a bit this morning at home, I'll try better tonight. This will come handy to listen some of my old Beatles recordings

Hey, I’m glad that you like it

Yes, this headphones processor should help with those Beatles records. Many of the first recordings and mixes done in the early days when stereo music was new have sounds panned hard left or right, which is not ideal for headphone listening._________________varice

...On a side note, I mostly do all of my music on headphones and have noticed that this makes it sound weird on speakers at times

Oh yes, I made the mistake *once* of spending a few wasted hours mixing some tracks with headphones overnight (I didn’t want to disturb my apartment neighbors) only to find the next day that the mixes did not sound good at all on my 250Ti loudspeakers _________________varice

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